English Language Imperialism

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Seen in its simplest terms, language imperialism involves the transfer of a dominant language to other peoples. The transfer is essentially a demonstration of power--traditionally military power but also in the modern world economic power--and aspects of the dominant culture are usually transferred along with the language. In view of the prestige of the dominant power and its culture, the transfer may not be imposed but actually be demanded by the peoples who adopt the dominant language. It is likely to be regarded as an intrinsically superior language and accorded alleged virtues--E.g., that it is more logical, more beautiful, or easier to learn than the dominated languages. Among the most successful imperial languages are Latin, Arabic, and English.

The dominant language can survive the collapse of the imperial power itself. At this stage the original native speakers lose control of the language, which eventually passes to a new evolving power structure. For example, Latin survived for 1,000 years as the language of the Roman Catholic Church, and it spread to areas such as Scandinavia that had never been part of the Roman Empire. During its period of dominance, the position of a language may appear to be unassailable, but it can be destroyed by successful challenges to the power structure on which it depends. Latin declined after the rise of the nation state and the Protestant Reformation, both of which led to the rise of national languages, including English.

By the time the English language began to spread overseas in the wake of British military and mercantile expansion, the written language was already on the way to standardization. Leaving aside some differences in vocabulary--and some minor variations in spelling, such as British colour and American color--essentially the same written form has been adopted worldwide. In the absence of a true standard of pronunciation, correct spoken English was assumed to be the preserve of polite London society, a view that was eventually formalized in the British Received Pronunciation of the early 20th century.

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In America, and later Australia and New Zealand and South Africa, new varieties of English were developed by native speakers coming from the British Isles. Early colonists would not in general have moved in fashionable circles in London, and consequently colonial speech was generally regarded by Londoners as an inferior form of English. The first Americanism to be condemned was the use of bluff as "headland," first recorded in 1735. Even among quite advanced ancient Asian civilizations, 19th-century colonial administrators sought to impose the English language and culture. In 1813 the official education policy in India was to impart "to the Native population knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of the English language." English came to be used as an official language not only in southern Asia but also in Singapore and Hong Kong, Malaya and the East Indies, and later in East Africa.

A very different situation developed in West Africa. There special trade languages, or pidgins, had long been in use for communication with Portuguese traders, and they used elements from Portuguese and African languages. When the British arrived, they began to incorporate elements from English. Mixed groups of Africans transported to the Caribbean by slave traders would not have a language in common, and pidgins would form the most effective means of communication. Eventually they would be adopted as a native language, called a creole.

The total number of English speakers was small before 1800, but since then the number has grown rapidly. Great Britain was indisputably the dominant English-speaking power in the 19th century, but it was already being overtaken by the United States both in population and as an economic power. International English in the 20th century has consequently been dominated by American rather than British English. The use of English has spread far beyond the old British Empire. It has even begun to replace French in Francophone Africa--e.g., Algeria and the former Zaire. English has some special status as official or second language in more than 70 countries. (SeeMap .) By the 1990s immigration and natural growth in the former colonies had created a population of some 350 million people who spoke English as their mother tongue, most of them in the United States. A further 250 million to 350 million people use English in some way as a second language. The number of people using English as a foreign language is impossible to assess, since it is arbitrary at what point someone with a limited knowledge counts as an English speaker. Something like a quarter of the world’s population has some competence in English, and the vast majority are not native speakers of the language.

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The demand for English from nonnative speakers has created a huge international English-language-teaching industry. Although American English has been the dominant partner, the British Council was set up after 1945 to promote the English language and British culture. By the 1990s the council had some 120,000 students learning English through its offices abroad and some 400,000 candidates for its English exams.

Up to the late 19th century, developments in mass communications--printing, newspapers, and the telegraph--had involved the written language. For the next century, beginning with the telephone and the phonograph, developments were to involve the spoken language. The film industry grew rapidly in importance after the addition of sound to moving picture, and since the main centre was in Hollywood rather than London, it was American English that was spread with the new medium. At about the same time, the broadcasting industry--initially radio and later television--developed first in Great Britain but was soon dwarfed by its American counterpart. People’s lives began to be controlled, in English-speaking countries and elsewhere, by the American-dominated advertising industry. Popular music found its way onto the airwaves, but following the introduction of rock and roll in the 1950s, broadcasters began to determine what kind of music was popular. The dominant language in this medium has always been American English.

The existence of modern mass communications has made it possible to set up international bodies and organize events on a global scale. The United Nations, the World Bank, and the European Union all have several official languages, as do international conferences and learned journals. Practical realities nearly always dictate that English be one of the official languages and also the one most used. The use of several official languages means that documents have to be translated from the original language into other official languages, but this is often viewed as a waste of time and money. There is thus a tension between the demands of equity, leading to the recognition of the importance of several languages, and the convenience of using only one.

Computer-based technology has led to a massive extension in the use of English, both in computer software and on the Internet. Computer languages are based on English, and English is the language normally used to communicate with the user. Software can, of course, use other languages, but it will doubtless make use of English-based commands. Texts in other languages can be found on the Internet, including Arabic and Japanese, but these few exceptions only underline the basic fact that the vast majority (about 85%, according to one recent French study) are in English. Anybody can in principle contact anybody else anywhere in the world, but in practice they can do this only if they are sufficiently proficient in English.

English is now used by so many people on an international scale and in so many areas of everyday life that its role as the language of the world might seem assured and permanent. Already within the last 50 years, however, there have been signs of a reaction against English and in favour of a local language, particularly where English was introduced as an imperial language. One day people everywhere might want to use their own languages. Erasmus wrote in Latin and modern Dutch intellectuals write in English, but in the future Dutch scholars might want to write in Dutch.

Moreover, the control exercised by the mass media is highly likely to provoke a reaction. The media increasingly determine the details of people’s lives: the way they speak to each other, how they wear a baseball cap, and even how they blow their noses. There could come a time when people object to having their culture and their social identities constructed by the mass media. As the means through which that power of the media is exercised, such a reaction would in all probability lead to a rejection of English, much as the reaction against church control once led to the rejection of Latin.

Finally, there is an obvious threat from computer technology to the status of English as an international lingua franca. Machine translation, if it can be fully automated, will make it possible for users of any language to access information. Translation linked to the technology that enables computers to recognize and produce speech will lead to automatic interpretation. Some automatic teller machines already give the user a choice of language, and Web sites are beginning to appear on the Internet with a choice of languages. In this way, although computer technology has in the short term given a massive boost to the use of English, it is likely in the longer term to make language use a matter of choice. Of course, nobody can see into the future, but sooner or later the dominant position of the English language is going to be successfully challenged.

Gerald Knowles is a professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Lancaster, Eng., and author of A Cultural History of the English Language.
Gerald Knowles

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